Twilight of the Arnor Beta 4C

Published on February 1, 2008 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals

I'd like to apologize once more for the delay. I kept running into snags with getting the map editor ready for the update. I also caught a few more minor things with TA in the process that won't be visible to you as users. This is also the first build of TA built on my new work PC. Yay!

If any of you are playing GC2 on Windows 98, ME, or 2000, if you could try out the map editor even if you don't plan to use it and see if it works for you, I'd appreciate it. I'm sure that some of you on Vista will want to use it so I'm sure that I'll hear from you.

Some of you have been reporting AI fleets with ships that have negative hitpoints. I had a debug message put in that would pop up a windows message box if the game detected it, but it was popping up behind fullscreen windows and made the game appear to be frozen, so I removed it. So, if you notice a fleet with negative HP (appears to happen after a battle), please note down the name of the fleet, save the game, and then try to find a recent save game from before the battle to send in so that we can try to reproduce it here.

As a reminder, please make sure to zip your save games before sending them in, and unless you actually can't start the game, e-mail bug reports and crash logs to gc2bugs@stardock.com so that you save the support people the trouble of forwarding them to me.

Also, I forgot to enable custom maps so you won't be able to load them into Twilight. If you really want to try it out before next week, you might be able to get around it by making your own tournament and putting it in the tournament directory.

+ NEW: Map Editor
+ NEW: Added option to enable/disable tech stealing
+ NEW: Added buttons to Lease/Maintenace screen to toggle between listing ships and improvements on the maintenance part
+ NEW: Hyperion Starbase modules now in

+ FIXED: Added code so that if an AI space miner can't find a new destination, it will go home instead of parking on an asteroid
+ FIXED: Crash in AutoPilot line graphic
+ FIXED: Gaia Vortex so that it will now update the planet surfaces for the affected planets
+ FIXED: Crash in InvasionWnd
+ FIXED: Bug where ships could get stuck on asteroid fields
+ FIXED: Stuck turn bug caused by a space minor on auto improve that was targeting an asteroid where another minor was parked

+ TWEAK: Added code to try to prevent bug where CTRL+N results in a game with all civs set to Fool level of intelligence.
+ TWEAK: Drengin AI now uses some new code for choosing planetary improvements. Beta testers: please let us know if you notice anything.
+ TWEAK: Minor Races made significantly more intelligent

Comments (Page 5)

rls669

on Feb 05, 2008

Also, they need to "turn on" spying on Minor Races. When you get the Jagged Knife event, or even a powerful Minor, you should be able to spy on them.

RE: The Thalans

I really hope these guys are getting some new stuff, because they are missing:

2. No access to "battle stations", even though Battle Stations 2 is in the Hyperion Starbases branch

I found them to be completely unplayable.

+1 for espionage against the Jagged Knife. They are often the most powerful race in the game.

I hope the Hyperion starbase modules will be filled out a bit, especially with some offensive power. The Singularity Armor isn't much good when a cargo hull with one laser can still blow the starbase away

They really need a resource mining module as well, and someone has said the influence module they get with Good ethics doesn't work.

Other than that, I don't have much trouble with the Thalans, but the defenseless starbases are a huge PITA. Better soldiering would be nice too, even with the Evil tech they're worse than average.

Zeinath

on Feb 06, 2008

Man, I'm just happy you guys love us all enough to make this awesome time-consuming game possiable to rune beautifuly on my Toshiba A105-S4211 laptop, which dies when playing Eve Online most times. Gal Civ II? Runs like a dream man, and looks so damn great. I wish more developers would appreciate their customers that don't have the cash to buy top of the line systems, and instead want to buy their games to play on what they currently have available

So much love from me to Stardock and co. You guys rock hardcore!

dfalken

on Feb 07, 2008

Well Cari, that's disappointing. If that's all the minor races are intended to be, then why even have them in the game? I thought I'd read that they were going to get a bit of individual flavor and become more interesting. It sounds like that's not the case. I hate to say it, but your never going to get a consensus among the player community on anything. Everyone will have their own take on how the game should be. With so many players, the possibility of everyone agreeing is very small. To that end, the more aspects of the game you make optional the greater chance you'll have of satisfying everyone. So it would seem that it would be in your best interest to make more toggles etc. than not. So I really don't understand what you meant by there not being a game to play... Is it that time consuming to code in these toggles? I'm sorry if I sound ungrateful, I'm certainly not. You all have a good thing going here. I'm just trying to make a contribution to your efforts by pointing out what I believe are things that would help improve the game even further. I know there is a time crunch, and I understand all that that entails. So please don't take my suggestion as an attack or critique. I love your work.

Klord

on Feb 07, 2008

Yeah, this game rox

CariElf

on Feb 07, 2008

really don't understand what you meant by there not being a game to play... Is it that time consuming to code in these toggles?

I can't think of a single feature in the game that someone hasn't asked for it to be optional, or have optional alternate behavior. The point that I'm trying to make is that for everyone to be happy, everything would have to be optional. At that point, you don't have a game. You have a bunch of checkboxes. GalCiv2 is a strategy game, and strategy games have specific rules defined for them. At some point you have to have non-optional features.

For some things it would be trivial to add options. It's a single if statement and a checkbox on the options screen. But for things that affect the AI, like giving the minor races optional abilities to colonize, invade, etc, each one of those would require if statements in multiple places, different functions, etc.

I thought I'd read that they were going to get a bit of individual flavor and become more interesting.

Brad is putting work into improving their AI, but as far as I know, he's not planning on giving them their own tech tree or make them start popping up snarky remarks like the other AI players or anything like that. Even now, I would argue that they're more interesting than the little creeps on the Warcraft 3 map, and Brad's changes should make them more interesting still.

SIR NASTY OF TANG

on Feb 07, 2008

I too feel there should be more to them but like you said it is a great game !!! I then to agree with the option to toggle the more the merrier but if this is worng.....
Nasty

Sir_On_The_Edge

on Feb 07, 2008

I personaly the implamentation of the sub-races is an atrocity. You may have graounds to back up the fact you can't please everyone.

But may I suggest one thing? Make a poll to deside.

dfalken

on Feb 07, 2008

Ah, that's pretty good news Cari. AI enhancements for the minors, no matter how minor, will be fun.

I understand what you mean about the options. There is only a limited time to get this thing out, and you could end up spending more time on implementing toggles than real meat.

Zenicetus

on Feb 07, 2008

If that's all the minor races are intended to be, then why even have them in the game? I thought I'd read that they were going to get a bit of individual flavor and become more interesting.

It takes a lot of effort to give just the major races an individual flavor. That's the whole point of the TA expansion, and look at how much testing and fine-tuning is required to balance things, so that some races aren't ridiculously easy to play and others are ridiculously hard. Once the balancing is done, I think the idea of TA is to make the majors more powerful than they were before, overall. Brad mentioned this in another post, IIRC.

Where could the minors fit into that scheme of things, with only (at best) a generic tech tree they'd all be using, with no extra points put into abilities at the start, and with no Super Abilities? Especially with games where tech trading is turned off. They'd just be cannon fodder on a larger scale than they are now. I don't need a bunch of easy targets for my conquest of the galaxy. I want to confront the main AI players, who have received the most attention from the developers, and who should be the main threat to my plans for domination. (insert evil laugh here)

Sethai

on Feb 09, 2008

I for one am completely against the concept of minor races. I can live with them for now, but I hope that by GC3 they have been seriously re-thought.

The distinction between minor and major races seems totally arbitrary and unnatural. Have civilizations that are there to be exploited if you want, but can't this just be due to their AI simply working in a different way and reflecting their lack of ambition? Or perhaps as races they simply lack the natural bonuses of others that are necessary to become a galactic power.

At the moment minor races really ruin immersion for me. Especially when events like the jagged knife occur, this unnatural distinction really stops the game from proceeding naturally, as it become impossible for new factions to exist as viable powers. There are other circumstances that betray this distinction as flawed. For example, if I somehow end up with a planet far from my core worlds that I cannot support, I will often sell it to a minor race so as to avoid strengthening my enemies. Unfortunately, their AI is simply not versatile enought to cope with this new turn of events.

The backstory and presentation of the minor races is either so undeveloped as to make the game look amateur. Races like the Snathi really break the fourth wall and are IMHO not appropriate in a professional game.

Franco fx

on Feb 09, 2008

I for one am completely against the concept of minor races.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way but if you feel that way why not turn them off? I do.

You can also turn off major events but if you want the major events I suppose you could get a minor without wanting one. I understood that the Jagged Knife has been taken out of the game but I may be mistaken about this. I have only had that event once in many games before the removal was announced (assuming I am correct that they have been removed)

Klord

on Feb 10, 2008

i just had the jagged knife event happen to me last game, and that was just 3 days ago.

Franco fx

on Feb 10, 2008

i just had the jagged knife event happen to me last game, and that was just 3 days ago.

Apparently, I misunderstood a post from Carielf on Jagged Knife. Said we wouldn't see the Jagged Knife again. Must have been referring to a text change.

Pdubya

on Feb 10, 2008

I tested the Arcean and the Kork, and I love the tech trees for these two. The Weather Zenith is awesome, as are the Korx Mercenary and Super Trade modules. The best technique I have found (so far) for surviving the lack of early base structures is:

Go full throttle early to make factories/labs, build several colony ships, then throttle the production rate Way Back while the colony ships are exploring. As my population grows, I research while slowly increasing the production tab to keep near a break-even rate. If I can survive until treaty-time, the new TA features really kick in, and I can do quite well. It does not hurt to put all the customization points into social, enonomics, and research, either. The purchase-now/interest rate reduction is also a very handy feature.

An earlier poster mentioned the increased tourism rates, and I can vouch that this is a significant income boost for high-influence races. I was making over 2800 bc/week (in tourism $) in my Kork game before my computer informed me that it cannot handle the immense galaxy. Now I understand why the Thalans keep knocking me around so bad.......

Man, I wish I knew how you did it. I am struggling to keep my head above water financially in the early game. Where is the purchase-now/interest rate reduction?
Thx

Loupdinour

on Feb 11, 2008

Apparently, I misunderstood a post from Carielf on Jagged Knife. Said we wouldn't see the Jagged Knife again. Must have been referring to a text change.

Aye, there was a "stutter" in the way the text string was built. For all other races a preceding word "The" was fine as in "The Snafi". However, "The Jagged Knife" is the race name so you would get "The The Jagged Knife"

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!